In a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a team of researchers has published an editorial calling for national governments to consider mandating real-time indoor air quality monitoring in at least all public buildings.   Their editorial is published in the journal Building Simulation on 25 April 2023.   The three-year-long COVID-19 pandemic, caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has revealed that there is a global indoor-air crisis. Vaccination alone has not completely controlled the COVID-19 pandemic and the virus continues to threaten human health and life. Scientists now know most if not nearly all ...

April 27, 2023 – For breast cancer patients undergoing breast reconstruction after mastectomy, avoiding postoperative oral antibiotics does not reduce the risk of infections, reports a study in the May issue of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery®, the official medical journal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS). The journal is published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer. "Our experience suggests that discontinuing routine oral antibiotic treatment after implant-based breast reconstruction ...

HOUSTON and SOMERVILLE, Mass. ― The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Generate:Biomedicines today announced a strategic collaboration to jointly discover and co-develop protein therapeutics for up to five oncology targets in advanced cancers, including small-cell and non-small-cell lung cancer. Under the co-development and commercialization agreement, MD Anderson and Generate:Biomedicines will each contribute toward creating optimized, potentially best-in-class therapeutics that can rapidly advance into proof-of-concept clinical trials. The agreement combines Generate:Biomedicines’ integrated machine-learning capabilities and experimental/wet lab capabilities – ...

Gambling addiction, also called “pathological gambling” and “gambling disorder (GD),” is known to have severe economic, social, mental, and physical consequences on those affected. One of the major factors contributing to the development and relapse of this disorder is stress. However, studies show that replacing gambling with alternative leisure activities may reduce the likelihood of developing the disorder. In recent years, forest bathing, or “shinrin-yoku,” a form of nature therapy, has emerged ...

“The surface is the skin through which our ocean breathes. It is a critical nursery ground for hundreds, possibly thousands, of species, and it is also one of the most vulnerable regions to human impacts. This is why we must treat the surface with exceptional care. It is an extremely unique and fragile environment, and small impacts at the surface could ripple into large impacts above and below the waves.” - Dr. Rebecca Helm, Assistant Professor of Environmental Science at Georgetown University   New research ...

Clinicians in an intensive care unit need to make complex decisions quickly and precisely, monitoring critically ill or unstable patients around the clock. Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University's Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII) collaborated with physicians and researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and UPMC to determine if artificial intelligence could help in this decision-making process and if clinicians would even trust such assistance. The team gave 24 ICU physicians access to an AI-based ...

Ammonia (NH3) is one of the most widely produced chemicals in the world, with a production of over 187 million tons in 2020. About 85% of it is used to produce nitrogenous fertilizers, while the rest is used for refining petroleum, manufacturing a wide range of other chemicals, and creating synthetic fibers such as nylon. However, all this comes at a high energy cost. Currently, most of the ammonia is produced using the conventional Haber-Bosch process, which requires combining nitrogen and hydrogen at high temperatures (400-450°C) and pressures (200 atmospheres). As a result, scientists ...

Oak Brook, IL – The April 2023 issue of SLAS Discovery contains six full-length articles and one mini-review covering high-throughput screening (HTS) for protease-inhibiting drugs, high-content phenotypic screening and other life sciences research. Featured in this month’s issue is the article “High-Throughput Method to Analyze the Cytotoxicity of CAR-T Cells in a 3D Tumor Spheroid Model Using Image Cytometry,” by Zurowski, et al, where the authors focus on the use of chimeric ...

Statement Highlights: A new American Heart Association scientific statement assesses and scores the heart healthiness of popular dietary patterns. Several dietary patterns, including the DASH-style eating plan, Mediterranean, pescatarian and vegetarian eating patterns, received top ratings for aligning with the Association’s dietary guidance. A few eating patterns, including Paleo and ketogenic diets, contradict the Association’s guidance and did not rank as heart-healthy eating patterns. The statement suggests opportunities for dietary research and interventions to promote health equity, recognizing the importance of social determinants of health in shaping dietary ...

Life in the ocean’s “twilight zone” could decline dramatically due to climate change, new research suggests. The twilight zone (200m to 1,000m deep) gets very little light but is home to a wide variety of organisms and billions of tonnes of organic matter. The new study warns that climate change could cause a 20-40% reduction in twilight zone life by the end of the century. And in a high-emissions future, life in the twilight zone could be severely depleted within 150 years, with no recovery for ...

In the summer of 2022, over 20,000 excess deaths across Spain, France, Germany and Great Britain were suggested to have been linked to extremely hot weather. In the context of global warming where climate models point to the fact that extreme heat waves are likely to increase both in frequency and magnitude, preventive measures and adequate communication of dangerous conditions take on special relevance. In a Brief Communication published in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, researchers from the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a centre supported ...

· Bladder cancer is the fourth-most diagnosed cancer in men, and survival for patients with advanced bladder is less than a year · Doctors don’t know which bladder cancer patients will benefit from immunotherapy  ·Treatment of patients with ineffective therapy causes unneeded harm and delays treatment with optimal therapies Chicago --- In a discovery that could improve the survival of bladder cancer patients, Northwestern Medicine scientists have developed a biomarker signature test to predict which ...

Down Memory Lane: Peter Ellinger’s Memoirs details the life of Law Professor Peter Ellinger, which has taken him around the world from Israel, to the United Kingdom, Australasia and finally Singapore, where he has chosen to retire. From his escape from Austria during Hitler’s reign, to his growing-up years in Israel, academia and legal practice, and his eventual retirement, this book takes you on a journey in time alongside Professor Ellinger. Professor Ellinger is a Professor Emeritus of the National University of Singapore ...

A new paper in FEMS Yeast Research, published by Oxford University Press, reveals the possible origin story of lager beers. Using historical records and contemporary phylogenomics research, investigators here show where lagers likely first originated: at the court brewery (Hofbräuhaus) of Maximilian the Great, elector of Bavaria, in Munich in 1602. Beer has been made since ancient times. Recent archaeology shows evidence of brewing in the eastern Mediterranean some 13,000 years ago. Although from the origins of brewing until the early 20th century, ale was ...

Researchers at Tokyo Tech have discovered hidden chemical order of the Mo and Nb atoms in disordered Ba7Nb4MoO20, by combining state-of-the-art techniques, including resonant X-ray diffraction and solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance. This study provides valuable insights into how a material’s properties, such as ionic conduction, can be heavily influenced by its hidden chemical order. These results would stimulate significant advances in materials science and engineering. Determining the precise structure of a crystalline solid is a challenging endeavor. Materials properties ...

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory has named Claus Daniel as Associate Laboratory Director for Advanced Energy Technologies (AET). He will begin his new role on Monday, May 1.  Daniel will join Argonne from Carrier Corporation, where he leads engineering partnerships and sustainability as part of Carrier’s strategy and innovation team. He manages the effort to decarbonize the product portfolio, with activities spanning 16 time zones in the U.S., Europe and Asia. Prior to joining Carrier, Daniel spent 16 years with DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) in a number of roles.    “It is an exciting ...

The vast majority of AI models used in medicine today are “narrow specialists,” trained to perform one or two tasks, such as scanning mammograms for signs of breast cancer or detecting lung disease on chest X-rays.  But the everyday practice of medicine involves an endless array of clinical scenarios, symptom presentations, possible diagnoses, and treatment conundrums. So, if AI is to deliver on its promise to reshape clinical care, it must reflect that complexity of medicine and do so with high fidelity, says Pranav ...

New research has revealed children’s physical activity in the UK has largely returned to pre-pandemic levels – but children are still more sedentary during the week.  The study, led by the University of Bristol, found that by summer last year 41% of children were meeting the national recommended physical activity guidelines of an hour on average of moderate to vigorous physical activity daily. Although this shows an improvement from the immediate aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, when little more than a third (37%) were meeting this target, it means the majority of children were still ...

Inhaling low concentrations of ethanol vapor can disable the influenza A virus in mice, without harmful side effects, says a new study by scientists at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST). The scientists believe it may also treat similar viruses such as the one that causes Covid-19.  Prof. Tsumoru Shintake, who leads the Quantum Wave Microscopy Unit at OIST, first proposed the idea to use ethanol vapor to treat respiratory tract infections. He set out to test the approach with his colleague, Prof. Hiroki Ishikawa, leader of the Immune Signal Unit at OIST, and their team members.   “Ethanol is an effective disinfectant ...

Nickel-zinc (Ni-Zn) batteries are promising due to their high output voltage, high theoretical specific energy, high safety, and low cost. However, rechargeable alkaline Ni-Zn batteries are challenging, since the cathodic side reaction of oxygen evolution results in low energy efficiency and poor stability. Recently, a research group led by Prof. YANG Weishen and Dr. ZHU Kaiyue from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences proposed ...

Methanol is a potential feedstock for biomanufacturing since it's easily obtained in an environment-friendly manner. But it is still challenging to construct a microbial cell factory for methanol-based bioproduction due to the toxicity of methanol and complex cellular metabolism. Recently, a research group led by Prof. ZHOU Yongjin from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has engineered yeast Ogataea polymorpha for efficient ...

SINGAPORE, 26 April 2023 – Symptoms of anxiety and depression in the post-peak pandemic era could be costing Singapore 2.9 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP)—or nearly S$16 billion—suggests a study conducted by Duke-NUS Medical School and the Institute of Mental Health (IMH). Publishing in the journal BMC Psychiatry, the researchers estimated the total economic burden of lost productivity due to anxiety and depression in Singapore to be S$15.7 billion (US$11.72 billion) annually, based on survey data from 5,725 Singaporean adults collected via an online panel between April and June 2022. Using ...

Dr Araujo, from the QUT School of Mathematical Sciences, said the research findings represented a blueprint for adaptation-capable signalling networks across all domains of life and for the design of synthetic biosystems. “Our study considers a process called robust perfect adaptation (RPA) whereby biological systems, from individual cells to entire organisms, maintain important molecules within narrow concentration ranges despite continually being bombarded with disturbances to the system,” Dr Araujo ...

Osaka, Japan – Many real-world systems, from climate systems to the physical mechanisms of robots, are governed by the invariant quantities that arise from their underlying geometric structures. Modelling these systems using computer simulations is a key tool for understanding them (for weather forecasting, for instance, or developing robot locomotion). It’s often possible to collect data for these systems, but making sense of those data to build a model is a more challenging task. Artificial intelligence ...

Arlington, Va., April 27, 2023 – A serious infectious threat response initiative (SITRI) implemented by the Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) team at Veterans Affairs North Texas Health Care System (VANTHCS) positively impacted IPC staff burnout and helped prevent an increase in healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings, published today in the American Journal of Infection Control (AJIC), suggest that pre-emptive investment in preparedness initiatives can enable healthcare facilities to retain routine prevention efforts and improve patient safety during infectious disease outbreaks. “During ...